The Internet is the site of some of the worst forms of racial and sexual vituperation. Perhaps the reason is that the usual social controls that moderate what we do in face-to-face encounters—normal inhibitions, conscience, religious teachings, disapproving looks of bystanders—do not operate, at least so effectively, in cyberspace. No one is looking over our shoulders. One operates, if one chooses, in complete anonymity; there is no easy way to trace one’s identity. For this reason, the Internet, which includes email, Facebook, Twitter, blogs, Snapchat, Reddit, Instagram, Tinder, dating services, and much more, is rife with hateful statements of all kinds, including racism, white supremacy, trolling, misogyny, and anti-Muslim, anti-Semitic, and pro-Nazi remarks and messages.
None of these behaviors is entirely new; indeed, some were common before the Internet came into wide use in the mid-1990s. The new medium merely made them easier and less costly to perform. More people misbehave online than do in person; and others, seeing how easy it is to do, sometimes follow suit. Sometimes this coordination is intentional, as when opponents of a liberal sociology professor send hundreds of emails to her administration hoping to get her fired. Unlike oral remarks, which disappear once they are spoken, or graffiti, which will be erased or painted over eventually, much material posted on the Internet will remain there indefinitely, becoming a permanent part of the visible landscape. If a hate message “goes viral,” millions of viewers may see it. This may be why many citizens are now, for the first time, beginning to realize how white-supremacist attitudes are shockingly commonplace.
The Internet, of course, does a lot of good. People can research subjects and find the answers to their questions. Friends separated by hundreds or thousands of miles can keep in touch. The police can inform citizens of crime in their neighborhoods. But as law professor Danielle Citron notes, the Internet is the Wild West: anything goes.
Unlike college campuses, which are somewhat susceptible to reasonable regulation, the Internet is, to this date, outside any form of governmental or state control—except in Europe and other foreign areas. The main sources of controls in the United States are peer pressure and any rules enacted by those who operate the sites and search engines, such as Facebook, Google, Bing, GoDaddy, and Yahoo. Talking back to the aggressor is often impossible, since one may not know who the aggressor is. And it is hard to toughen one’s hide in response to a message that may have gone viral or that attracts the prurient curiosity of people in your neighborhood or social circle, such as a picture of you without clothes.
As Citron and others point out, private law, including tort suits for invasion of privacy, defamation, or intentional infliction of emotional distress, is a potential source of restraint, as is criminal law in certain extreme situations. Women victimized by “revenge porn” (photos of themselves distributed by jilted lovers) have succeeded in having the photos removed, and a few district attorneys have prosecuted malicious posters of damaging material that caused a victim’s death or suicide. Unmasking the poster is possible in the course of civil or criminal discovery, although it is not easy.
What can we learn from this situation? One lesson is that human nature is not necessarily good, especially when it is easy and cost-free to misbehave. Another is that controls may actually work, but their absence leads to increased irresponsible behavior.
As more users, including worried parents, shrink from Internet use because of what they find there, advertisers, web page designers, and Silicon Valley may find new ways to control the worst forms of abuse and vituperation in this new and enticing theater of operation. Some are doing this now. As we went to press, Google, PayPal, GoDaddy, and Facebook were banishing a growing list of extremist groups and individuals for violating their terms of service. The Electronic Frontier Foundation was monitoring the situation, concerned about hate and anti-Semitism online but also worried that government censorship could expand into legitimate areas.
The many private law remedies, such as suits for intentional infliction of emotional distress, defamation, invasion of privacy, assault, and others discussed above, are potentially available for those targeted by malicious Internet messages. State legislators and Congress, under its power to regulate commerce, may eventually take action, as governments have done in many other countries. Until then, the Internet will continue to provide graphic evidence of the ability of words to wound.
Finally, just as in the Wild West, it is sometimes hard to know who wears the white hat and who the black. A growing list of right-wing groups, including fringe churches, have been suing the Southern Poverty Law Center for listing them on its website as hate groups. The conservative churches are hate groups, in the SPLC’s estimation, because they condemn homosexuality as a sin and sometimes take action to make life hard for gay people. But the churches believe that the Bible cannot be in error. The result of this impasse is that two groups are labeling each other as hate groups, with the labeling the main evidence for the complaint of one. Before the Internet made the rapid dissemination of information possible, the two groups might easily not have known about each other.